This morning at 1am while in the process of departing for a time-sensitive tour to a nighttime-only natural phenomenon, our crappy tour bus driver tried to extort a bus load of westerners into paying him double entry fees for entry to the attraction, or he would not leave. We loaded the bus anyway and banded together in refusal. After wasting about 15 -20 minutes of our time, after only 3 hours of sleep, our anger and refusal to comply finally shamed him into departing without his fake fees. On the way up the volcano, our front driver’s side tire blew. The chauffeur had no flashlight, a bald spare and no…

We’ve been non-stop on the go lately, but today we had an eleven-hour bus ride, mostly with 3G service, go figure, which gave me time to finish editing the diving video I’ve been working on. We’re traveling with only an iPad for a computer so it’s been quite a mission to find the right apps…

8 pm last night saw us loading into a Toyota Kijang Innova with three other passengers plus a driver, en route to our next destination: the Kerinci region of Jambi province, in Sumatra. We picked an overnight transfer because we figured it’d be preferable to losing a travel day on transit, and we figured we…

We left Mabul in somewhat questionable conditions (high winds and seas) for the boat we were using to make the hour long trip back to Semporna, but all ended well. Our boat ride wasn’t nearly as harrowing as we imagined it might be, although the local fisherman and his son whom we plucked from the…

Jason loves his nudibranchs, but I’ve been struck by the general diversity of sea creatures I’ve never seen before, and the incredibly relaxed nature of the turtles here. We’ve seen mandarin gobies (the rainbow colored little guys), massive chilled out turtles, cute little box fish, frog fish of various colors and sizes (weird looking green…

For the whole of my diving career I’ve been in love with a little animal called the nudibranch. They are a member of the Nudibranchia, a group of soft-bodied, marine gastropod mollusks without a shell in their adult stage. In short, their “lungs” are on the outside. Suddenly the name makes sense, right? They come…

Welp, we found the bedbugs, and thankfully before they found us. We had a positively harrowing boat ride in waves and rainstorm out to Mabul today, and arrived at Mabul Backpackers, a semi longhouse style structure on stilts over the water on the island. For those who aren’t familiar with this area, it’s considered one…

Before we get on too much of a streak here, waxing on about our wonderful experiences in paradise, I thought it might be of interest to plant our feet firmly back on earth for a few moments. I think you may recall some other posts in this same vein a few years back, around the…

We’ve spent the past couple days riding around Kuching on our motorbike searching out the local wildlife. So far it’s been a success, and we’ve mostly seen a bunch of monkeys. Here are few of our favorites: Orangutans at Semenggoh Wildlife Centre. Here they are semi-wild and free to come and go as they like.…

Following our cultural experience in KT, we hopped a plane for a quick overnight in Kuala Lumpur before catching a flight to Borneo the next morning. We stayed at a perfectly suited little guest house called Moon Eleven, about 1.5km from the LCCT (low-cost carrier terminal) bus stop / train station outside the KL airport.…